San Francisco For Beginners

A First-time Visitor To America's Most Popular City Discovers The Joys Of Cable Cars, Cuisine And Comfortable Shoes

November 24, 1996|By Phil Vettel, Tribune Staff Writer.

My wife and I planned to honeymoon in San Francisco. It seemed the perfect romantic spot. Also, my wife had an expense-paid convention trip lined up, so it wouldn't cost much.

Unfortunately, a couple of months before the trip, the city's hotel maids threatened to strike; they settled a few weeks later but not before the convention organizers had gotten cold feet and relocated to Las Vegas.

Since then, San Francisco always represented to us an opportunity lost, a dream deferred.

Of course, we knew we'd get there eventually. And yet it took 16 years, and another paid-for business trip, before we finally set foot in San Francisco. (What a couple of cheapskates, you're thinking to yourself, and you're probably right.)

After four glorious and profoundly insufficient days in the city by the bay, I can offer those who have never visited this advice:

Don't wait 16 years for a crummy freebie. Make time to get here while you can.

For one thing, you'll want to see San Francisco before the next Big One levels the place. That's a tempting point to raise when discussing Shaky Town, though oddly enough sometimes earthquakes improve things.

Had we visited, say, in early 1989, our hotel room might have included a view of the civic eyesore called the Embarcadero Freeway (picture Lake Shore Drive with a concrete overpass hugging its length); the freeway was damaged so badly in the 1989 earthquake (the one that also interrupted the Giants-A's World Series) that the city cleared it away -- thus turning the Embarcadero into a shadow-free, bayside promenade lined with palm trees.

But don't count on Nature's redecorating schemes to work this well every time.

Take a hike

While the list of things we didn't do in San Francisco would fill a guidebook, we did manage to do a good bit of sightseeing by the most sensible means -- walking.

San Francisco is probably the greatest walking city in the country, if not the world. The city is compact, its architecture built on a scale that invites closeup scrutiny. And it teems with quirky shops and beautiful views that can't be fully appreciated if you're negotiating a car through San Francisco's confounding and abominable traffic, which never lets up because people never stop driving because there's no place to park.

So unless you're planning a side trip to the nearby wine country, don't bother renting a car. Even if you don't feel like walking, cabs are plentiful. Rates aren't cheap, but the city is so compact that rides rarely cost more than $7. Public transportation is cheap and will take you just about anywhere. And don't overlook the cable cars with three lines that will, for $2 one way, take you a pretty fair distance (with plenty of hopping-off points in between).

Assuming you're going to do some walking, the two indispensable things to pack for a San Francisco vacation are good walking shoes (already broken in) and a sweatshirt or windbreaker. The shoes are an obvious choice, but no matter how sunny it looks outside, take a sweatshirt or jacket, because a sudden wind shift can turn things foggy and chilly in a hurry. I'm convinced that yuppie sweater-arms-knotted-over-the-shoulders look emerged among San Franciscans who know that even on days when you don't need a sweater, five minutes later you might.

Thus prepared, while my wife was having the time of her life attending business symposiums in windowless rooms, I made do by walking for hours through the downtown, North Beach and Union Square areas, climbing up and down Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill and strolling around the waterfront.

Not only is walking the best way to view San Francisco, there are resultant physical benefits as well. Huffing and puffing up the hills (and yes, they're every bit as steep as they seem in the movies) will give you an aerobic workout. And all that walking will build up your leg muscles; just take a glance at the legs of any San Francisco resident.

There's a word in San Francisco for a person with flabby calf muscles: Tourist.

Did I mention it's a good idea to pack some ibuprofen?

Pier pressure

Consider a walking tour of San Francisco's waterfront to begin. There's lots to see and do (even if much of it is impossibly touristy, we were, after all, tourists), the people-watching is terrific and it's all on level ground. You can ease into the walking mode without annihilating your legs on the first day.

We started with Sunday brunch at Greens, a bright and cheerful vegetarian restaurant in the Ft. Mason Center, which is right on the water. While waiting for our food, we amused ourselves by watching a duck dive underwater -- staying submerged for 10 to 15 seconds each time -- for food. (No paddling by the dock for hand-tossed breadcrumbs for this duck; in San Francisco, everybody wants fresh seafood.) Greens pulls in a crowd dressed in anything from polo shirts to Sunday best.